This article originally appeared in the Detroit News January 28, 2025. 

A few years ago, I flew into the Detroit airport and took a shuttle bus to the long-term parking lot. The shuttle bus hit some rough road, bouncing luggage up in the air.

Our bus driver couldn’t resist. “She said she’d fix the damn roads,” she yelled. “But she ain’t fixed the damn roads!”

The passengers laughed. They knew who she meant.

Polls show that most Michigan voters want good roads. The devilish political question is how to pay for it. Should the state borrow the money, raise taxes or use existing revenue?

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, is calling for an additional $3.1 billion for roads, all without raising taxes. And Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acknowledged that cuts to existing programs may be necessary.

This is a huge shift in Lansing’s road-funding discussions. These negotiations usually don’t begin with bipartisan agreement that some or all of the money can be shifted from lower budget priorities. Perhaps lawmakers remember the thumping voters delivered to a roads proposal in 2015. Proposal 1 would have raised taxes by $2 billion, with 63% going to the roads. Eighty percent of voters said “no.”

Whitmer famously ran on fixing the roads, but her approach to financing has shifted. In 2019, Whitmer proposed raising the gas tax 45 cents a gallon. Even Whitmer’s fellow Democrats in the Legislature were cool to the idea, with House Democratic Leader Christine Greig, D-Farmington Hills, calling it “extreme.”

The governor then pivoted by borrowing $3.5 billion for road construction. Debt doesn’t get the state to the point where it fixes roads faster than they fall apart. It increases current road spending at the cost of future fixes, and it adds extra interest costs.

The governor and lawmakers would do well to prioritize infrastructure. The Mackinac Center has offered five road-funding principles, first articulated by my colleague Joe Lehman.

First, governments own the roads, and it is lawmakers’ responsibility to keep them in good working order. Roads are critical to a thriving economy, and poor conditions create other undesired costs.

Second, policymakers can identify inefficient transportation spending practices. In 2023, Whitmer signed a prevailing wage law, which increases costs for state-funded construction projects. This law should be repealed.

Third, the user-fee concept is a good model: road funding should be connected to usage. Michigan already does this with fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees. Lawmakers can also redirect the sales tax collected on gas purchases away from schools and toward roads. Michigan is one of just six states that levy fuel taxes and sales taxes on gas sales.

Fourth, lawmakers should avoid an overall increase in the size of government. A tax increase should be a last resort.

Fifth, more money for the roads can be found by reprioritizing spending. Fiscal sleuths will find plenty of pork in the state budget. In 2023 the state spent $2 million on a curling facility in Traverse City. Michigan’s state-funded poet laureate position costs $100,000 annually. Lawmakers approved $13 million for five museums across the state.

Michigan spends billions of dollars on ineffective corporate subsidy programs. For example, an Oakland County businesswoman secured a $20 million grant and then bought a $4,500 coffee maker — money that would have been better spent filling potholes.

The House plan puts more money toward roads without raising taxes. It redirects money away from the state’s ineffective business subsidy programs and recommends using the sales taxes collected on gas for the roads. It checks the boxes on road-funding principles. It will be tough for Whitmer to find a better plan.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.